Splish! Splash! Animal Baths
by April Pulley Sayre
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Splish! Splash! Take a bath.
Brush your teeth clean.
And think of the animals.
They clean themselves, too.
Squirt!
An elephant sprays water over its back.
Squirt!
Baby will get a shower, too.
Pigs take their baths in thick, brown mud. They soak, slog, snort…and seem to smile. Mud cools their skin. And best of all, it gets rid of itches, as well.
Birds take baths in puddles. Or shower under sprinklers or waterfalls.
Once clean, they preen-- smoothing, fluffing, and straightening their feathers. That’s like hair brushing for you.
Ducks do extra work. They spread oil on their feathers. This special oil waterproofs them. Without it, ducks would get soggy and cold…which wouldn’t be ducky at all!
Bears have long fur that gets itchy and full of insects. To scratch itches, a bear rubs against a tree. Bears also take dust baths. They roll in dirt. Or they swim and splash in a wide, cool stream.
Even the king of beasts can get beastly dirty. So lions do what house cats do. They lick their long fur clean. But even a lion’s tongue can’t reach the back of its head…so it licks a paw and rubs it over its head and ears.
A comb might come in handy for cleaning a chimpanzee’s fur. But chimps don’t have combs, so fingers work fine.
Chimps bite and pull bugs and leaves from their family’s and friends’ fur. What are good buddies for?
Oxpeckers, a type of bird, spend their time hanging around. Where? Giraffes. Giraffes don’t seem to mind. Oxpeckers peck away ticks. They get a meal, and the giraffe gets clean.
Hippos have helpers, too. But these helpers are underwater, in the rivers and ponds where hippos wade. Fish nibble algae off a hippo’s skin. Does it tickle the hippo? Only hippos know. And they won’t say.
Fish don’t take baths. They live in water. But some do try to stay clean. Big fish wait in line—not for a car wash, but for a cleaner fish.
Nibble, nibble, the cleaner fish bites tiny pests off the big fish’s scales. The big fish gets clean. The cleaner fish gets a meal. Now that’s an amazing deal!
Nearby, a shrimp crawls into a moray eel’s mouth.
Will it become a shrimp dinner? Not this time. It’s a cleaner shrimp—an animal dentist. It picks and eats food off the moray’s teeth. Instead of being a shrimp dinner, it’s dinnertime for this shrimp!
Now that you’ve heard about animal baths and animal dentists, and how animals splish, splash, peck, and preen—it’s time to take your bath.
Splish and splash.
And think of the animals. They, too, are getting clean.
Comprehension Questions
1. How does the baby elephant get washed?
2. How do birds bathe? What do birds do after bathing that pigs do not?
3. Tell how bears and pigs are alike (baths, itches).
4. What do lions and house cats both do to clean themselves?
5. How do oxpeckers and giraffes help each other?
6. What does the cleaner shrimp do?
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